Many years ago. My youngest daughter (14) at the time was leaving Alabama coming back to Chicago. The bus driver noticed her shirt which had a Confederate flag on it. Some other design also. Anyway. The bus driver demanded she remove the shirt or she was kicked off the bus. So she got off the bus. Turned the shirt inside out in order to even get home. It was a mess. A 14 year old threatened to be stranded over a shirt.

So some people really do take that sort of thing very serious. I have problems dealing with problems that seem to never get solved.

Shyloh, your daughter didn’t understand what that flag symbolizes. Once she reached Chicago, she could have been placed in danger, especially if the bus station where she was getting off is located in downtown Chicago. It’s too bad that the bus driver didn’t explain it to her.

I can see why people are disturbed by an image, even a shirt of someone who perhaps didn’t intend the image to be taken as it was. The Confederate flag is really not much different than the Nazi use of the swastika, though the swastika is an ancient spiritual symbol that Hitler had no business using.

I just don’t get this Southern Heritage and the Battle Flag of the Confederacy. First the offensive flag is not the flag of the confederacy. The first one was easily confused for the Stars and Stripes of the Union, the second one had the battle flag symbol in the upper left with the majority of the flag being white….this too was replaced since this flag could be confused for a flag of surrender in calm winds. The third and final flag of the confederacy had the same appearance except for a vertical red bar, so as not to confuse it for a flag of surrender. They can be seen here: http://www.usflag.org/confederate.stars.and.bars.html …sorry still don’t have the knowledge to post a photo directly.

Frankly I don’t see what all this talk about southern heritage in dealing with the battle flag is all about…I just don’t get it. I have lived in the south all my life. Southern heritage to me is something entirely different. What it is, is a flag which was from a period in the history of this country that scarred it with civil war. My flag of allegiance is and always was the flag of the United States of America. When I served in the military it wasn’t under the allegiance of the Confederacy.

Southern heritage for me is different. While my ancestors do not go back that far….my father’s side came to the US in the 1920’s from Germany….my mother’s side has been here longer with British and German ancestry. I did have a relative who fought for the confederacy and spent time in a Union prison, beyond knowing that and his name I don’t know anything more about him.

So what is Southern heritage to me? To me it involves the different way of life compared to other areas……talk to me and I don’t sound Southern much but I can bring on a southern accent when I want to. I remember once at work where a Georgia man with a thick accent tried to tell a Philly man a story. The Philly man looked at him and said I didn’t understand a single thing you said…..I turned around and told him what he said. I explained I also speak Southernese. So Southern heritage to me, y’all, is the way we talk.

Then there is the food……yumm, fried of course. Fried chicken, chicken fried steak, greens, Cajun, N. Carolina BBQ, and of course grits to name a few. You can’t forget the grits. Then there is sweet tea. Order tea in the south and it will be sweet. So Southern heritage to me is food. One of my favorite treats when I was young was to put peanuts into a coke bottle….definitely a southern thing but don’t knock it until you tried it and if you do it, it has to be with a bottle of coke and not a can. Also there are the boiled peanuts too.

Then there is the music. Blues started with slaves in the south and it evolved into much more. You have old-time music, gospel, spirituals, country music, rhythm and blues, funk, rock and roll, bluegrass, and jazz were either born or developed in the south. Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Elvis, Ray Charles, James Brown, Otis Redding, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, and .38 Special are all southern starters. So Southern heritage to me is the music.

Southern Heritage is also family and church….this is the bible belt.

NASCAR is also Southern heritage….with it’s history tied to prohibition and bootlegging and the need for fast cars to elude the police while it carried it’s cargo of moonshine.

What Southern heritage isn’t the battle flag. This is a dark moment in history in what is the United States. This flag represents all that was wrong in the Civil war and that time frame. It has evolved into a symbol of white supremacy and a constant reminder to the days of slavery and it is offensive to many. Why is this considered heritage when then confederacy lasted only 4 yrs? The items I have listed as heritage have been around a lot longer. The Nazi flag isn’t flown in Europe due to it’s history and what it represents and as such the battle flag of the Confederacy should also be removed from all governmental property. Like the President has said, it belongs in a museum. It’s history should not be erased but placed into a museum as a reminder to all.

Towerflower, that was beautiful! I, too, have a Southern Heritage on my father’s side (my Mother’s family is German). As I mentioned to Xena, one of my ancestors, Daniel Webster Futrell was the only person in Trigg County, Kentucky to vote for Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860. He was 19 years old at the time. I had relatives fight on both sides of the war. Unfortunately, courage and integrity are not hereditary. Both of my parents voted for George Wallace. .You can’t always choose your relatives, but your CAN choose your family. I consider the folks here to be Family.

Linda….I can’t imagine what families went through who fought against each other on the battlefield. My grandparents fought against each other on the battlefields of France..one for the US and the other for Germany in WW1….but that happened before they became family through the marriage of my mother and father.

I’ve been doing ancestry.com for awhile, hoping to find more information….so far I’ve only found one civil war participant….my father’s side is a dead end due to not many German records being online but I keep checking hoping to find out more. I know some names but without more German records I’ve hit a dead end.

Linda,
My dear friend, we are not the comment police here. You have been gracious to share your medical condition with us, so if anyone on this blog should criticize your writing, they will be dealt a knock-out punch by me.

Xena, I wish that Nikki Haley would use an Executive Order to remove the Stars and Bars in South Carolina, but don’t really have much hope for that. My oldest and dearest friend now lives in Germany, but is from S.C. He says that Haley has been a very bad governor and has done absolutely nothing to improve economic conditions, race relations, or crime in the state. He thinks of her as another Sarah Palin!

Hi there Xena,
Paulette Motzko here nominating you for the three day quote challenge. Simply choose 3 quotes to share on your blog for three consecutive days and choose three people you nominate for the challenge too.
Paulette Le Pore Motzko

Hey Paulette! Thanks for nominating me for the challenge. I’m already behind in many things,including accepting nominations for awards. If I can start the challenge next week, that would be better. Is that acceptable?

Funny. The purported quote from a Michael Lawson doesn’t say it’s to bond Roof out of jail but to protect him. Protect him from what? I searched for the guy’s name and that of the organization, and nothing comes up. I would say that it’s a hoax.